A study of adverse drug reactions and potential drug-drug interactions in the patients attending the Psychiatric Outpatient Department in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital: a cross-sectional study

The objective of this study was to record and analyze the adverse drug reactions (ADRs) due to psychotropic drugs and the potential drug-drug interactions (pDDIs) amongst different psychotropic drugs as well as pDDIs between psychotropic drugs and other co-prescribed drugs by using Medscape software (online).

A cross sectional study was carried out in patients visiting the Psychiatric Outpatient Department of a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital. Total 500 prescriptions were analysed for the ADRs and pDDIs.

Total 37 ADRs were observed in 32 (6.4%) patients. Antipsychotics was the most common group and olanzapine was the most common psychotropic drug suspected of causing ADRs. Tremors was the most common ADR observed. All of the ADRs were nonserious and were in a “Recovering” state when the data was collected. Total 1051 pDDIs were observed in all the 500 prescriptions surveyed, out of which 361 prescriptions were showing at least one pDDI.

The overall incidence of ADRs was not very high (6.4%), which reiterates the judicious use of the drugs in the study setting. Majority of prescriptions had only 1-2 pDDIs per prescription.